From the Stars: Salvation: Part 1 of 3
by Aussie
Summary: Details the events after Season 2 and the lead up to the Return to the Colonies and the Third Cylon War. No S3 Spoilers. Part 1 of 3.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **The purpose of this story is prettymuch to set up the backstory required for an idea I have which I feel I need to tell. The idea that I have is near the end of this chapter, and it'll be pretty recognisable. This story sets up the history of a few original characters, as well as histories of characters we know and love from the BSG universe.

More Authors Notes at the end, so I don't spoil the first chapter.

**Spoilers: **Season 1 – 2, and unintentional ones from Season 3 if I guess what's going to happen right – no direct spoilers.

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From the stars

Chapter 1

I knew the meaning behind the words which were being spoken, and I knew the story far too well, as did many of the others standing in the hangar that day, yet I still don't think that we as a people could even begin to understand them. There was no possible way that we could, even after all that we had seen and all that we had been shown. Yet, we still knew the enormity of it, and the ordeal that these people had gone through to get here. I knew the numbers, but I couldn't truly put myself into their shoes. It was hard to believe, that as far as we could calculate, 40 billion people were massacred fifteen years ago to this day.

I looked around the hangar, and could see a few people openly weeping. It was obvious that they were the Colonials among us, mourning the loss of their families and mostly everyone that they knew. Even though we Earthers couldn't emotionally fathom what they had lost, we could make some damn good guesses and assumptions, or at least I thought I had until joined up with SpaceNav. I soon learned that the assumptions I had made were almost all completely wrong once I had joined them. These people were tough, resilient, enduring, and most importantly of all, most of them were ethical and moral. It was hard not to pay them respect on the half a dozen special days which were commemorated to them annually, today being the most important of them all. I wasn't here to pay my respects for what they had lost, no. I wasn't here to pay respects to what they had gone through. I was here to pay my respects to them, for going through what they had, and for losing what they did, and coming out better than alright in the end. I can begin to guess that if I had gone through anything remotely like what they did, I would have lost myself in sorrow and remorse, and I would have stopped being the person that I am. The Colonials had lost _everything_ that they had, and in the end they were more human than we were. I know that if we, as a people of Earth had gone through the same ordeal, our outcome wouldn't have been as good.

I remember the day that the world first learned that there was a possibility of life other than our own. It had been broadcast over many television and radio networks worldwide as a number of government and private tracking stations had detected a small object entering the Earth's atmosphere directly above Frankfurt, Germany in 2010. It was dismissed as a small asteroid which had avoided detection, until it changed course and headed back into space. By the time it had been reported in, a number of tracking stations had locked onto the object. Apparently, once it entered space, it just disappeared off their scopes. At first I thought it was a hoax, but then I got my hands on some actual data straight from one of the tracking stations and I began to have my doubts. Of course, this was immediately claimed to be a number of objects by various news crews and experts, but no one could come to a clear conclusion. I think that all of the deep space radar and deep space telescopes spent the next couple of months scouring the skies, but we didn't find any more objects like it.

There was of course, a transmission which also came from the object. As far as the scientists could tell, it was over a broad range of frequencies, but they couldn't interpret the information within it. It wasn't until about a month later that the scientists discovered that the transmission was also transmitted in a completely different way than anyone had ever considered before, and as far as I could remember, it was done purely by accident. People began to get very excited once that had happened.

No one had really taken it well that this might be the first hard evidence for the existence of intelligence other than our own in the universe. Some people were shocked to the core, others just kept going about their day like nothing had happened and it was just something cool to talk about. I remember seeing a television programme that showed that various militaries of the world had armed their weapons when the contact shown up. Various countries began throwing accusations at each other, all stating that the other was developing technology which could be of great benefit behind closed doors, possibly for military purposes. Of course, a number of these accusations were thrown at America, and during that period, I was very, very, very glad that I was out of the country. I was an archaeologist and part of an international expedition to try and find fossils of early humans in Australia. It was a time when anti-American attitudes were at a high, and luckily it wasn't too hard to hide my accent. Although Australia was a developed-multicultural country, there was still anti-American sentiment there. I couldn't blame them, our leaders had degraded over time and I can remember thinking that I wished Bill Clinton had come back into office. Adamson won after Bush lost his second election, and he was the worst that I had heard of by far. Just a month after he had taken office, Iran and Saudi Arabia were invaded as a part of the 'war on terror'. In the months afterwards, it had become known as the 'war for oil', because that's what the consensus of most of the world was. Still, a lot of people taunted and jeered at us after that whenever we left our country, but they didn't realise that we weren't responsible for the actions of our leaders. Yeah, we had chosen them, but I for one didn't know what they'd do once they took office. I voted for the other guy anyway, it was on my bumper sticker.

Things died down after the UFO for a while, no one was willing to back the idea that we had been visited by an extra-terrestrial intelligence without further proof. Further proof came on the day that would be marked as the most important day in the history of Earth. I remember being woken up by my girlfriend of the time, in the morning saying that I needed to see the television reports. It was certainly one of the more shocking moments of my life as I walked out and watched the TV. Overnight, twenty five to thirty objects had appeared in our Solar System, and their images were being posted all over the television. It seemed that this was the proof we needed.

I remember that the months after that were absolute chaos. No one was really ready for the arrival of a race from the stars. And then we find out that they're refugees fleeing an enemy that had wiped out 12 entire worlds. Things were made even worse when it was revealed to the world that they were completely, 100 human. Apart from a couple of minor differences that we could find within them after various analyses, and a few more that they supplied after their own analyses of us, we were exactly the same. Panic overtook the entire globe, many cities were ravaged by riots, and pretty-much no one wanted to let the refugees onto the surface to settle. Simply put, people were afraid. We were afraid. Afraid of an enemy which had such capability, afraid of the fact that we realised these refugees possessed the capability to wipe us out from orbit if they wanted to, and afraid that we weren't the only things in the universe anymore. Despite the fact that a number of 'experts' had been saying for years that we were ready for extra-terrestrial contact, it was revealed that we were far from ready to deal with the repercussions. I know that I certainly found it very unnerving that one minute I could be living my life, and the next I could be wiped out from a nuclear blast which has occurred several hundred metres over my head with almost nothing that anyone could do about it.

It wasn't until a year later that everything had settled down. An agreement between the Colonials and the United Nations had been set aside, and the Governments of the United States of America, Australia, Russia, Brazil, and various countries of the Ivory Coast in Africa agreed to set aside areas which the Colonials could own and call their own, almost like countries within countries. The quality of the land that we gave them was poor, often in the deserts or sparsely used areas, and therefore the land couldn't support a large population. However, a large number of the refugees managed to make it planet side and off of their ships. Sharing of ideas and technologies were occurring between the two cultures, and we were starting to begin to get into space.

Almost a year and a half after that would be known as the 'second-most' shocking day for the people of Earth. About fifteen more ships had appeared in Earth's Solar System. They were more refugees from the Colonies. More had survived. More was good, but what was better was the fact that the small civilian fleet wasn't escorted by two warships like the first Colonial Feet that arrived was, but by three. This took us up to five battleships in total, and we were starting to feel a lot better about ourselves.

In the time since then, there has been a complete transfer of all technologies that the Colonials still have a working knowledge of, which was a fair bit, including their FTL drives. All of the Colonials which wanted to live on Earth, were now living on Earth and they even had their own nation and economic system. For the first time in history, all the nations of Earth were working towards a common goal: protecting Earth and the Solar System from incursions from the Cylons, if they ever showed up. We had made a number of ships of our own since the Colonials arrived and gave us what they still knew of their technologies and civilization, however we were a long way from fortifying the Sol. System.

One of the facts that was realised early on was that Earth, as people, as a race, and as a planet, would not be able to create a viable military space force quickly, and not just from the technology that the Colonials had given us which allowed us to get into space. We needed more. To be able to produce anything like the Colonials could, to the same scale and speed, we needed to fast-track Earth's development in every area. And that's a part of what I'm doing now. I'm standing in the Hangar deck of the Battlestar _Pegasus_, half a month away from New Caprica, one of two habitable planets between Earth and the Colonies. The refurbished Battlestars _Pegasus _and _Galactica_ were leading a fleet of Colonial Civilian ships, plus three Earth ships, back to the Twelve Colonies. Apparently the Cylons had left, leaving us with the ability to return to the Colonies, which was exactly what we were doing. Our mission: To scavenge as much as we could remaining of the Colonials' Civilization – technology, medicines, theories, town planning methodologies, literature, law, ethics, theories, and more – and bring them back to Earth in order to fast-track our development so that we could prepare for the return of the Cylons, if or when it happened. Our secondary objective was also to make contact with the people which were left behind on New Caprica almost ten years ago, if any remained, to determine what happened to them if none did, and to try and determine the whereabouts of the Cylons and what their intentions were.

Of course, to achieve this fact, we had to take two of five Battlestars away from Earth, but it was a risk that everyone had been willing to take. Anyway, by now, the shipyards should be complete, and we should have began work on our first Battlestar. After we'd worked out all the problems of building one, we'd be able to churn them out like nobody's business. Anyway, there were more ships defending Earth than just three Battlestars. Every ship that the Colonials brought to Earth had been armed as much as it could, all the civilian ships, mining ships, agricultural ships, luxury liners, everything. So really, there was a fleet of about fifty ships defending the Earth, and although fifty ships was not enough, a risk of two years seemed worth it if we could better defend Earth sooner, rather than later.

Under no circumstances were we to let the Cylons know of the location of Earth. One of the reasons which was used to send the Battlestar _Galactica _and _Pegasus_, and a number of ships from the first Colonial Fleet was that if the Cylons were encountered, we could claim that we were the original Colonial Remnant and that we were returning to re-claim our homes after developing the technology to essentially remove the radiation from the planet. That was just one of many stories which had been drummed into my head for hours, as a part of my training for this mission. I thought that that story was a bit dodgy, but then again, they had come up with much more effective methods of ensuring that the Cylons didn't discover the location of Earth. One of which included the destruction of all of the ships and everyone within the fleet. I knew that this was a possibility before I signed up, but I am still scared about the prospect of dying light-years from home. I think about that and can't help but feel guilty remembering that the Colonials no longer have a home. I've been thinking more and more about it for the last two weeks, as two weeks ago we crossed the threshold where the Cylons were last encountered. We were now effectively in known Cylon explored space, and the fact scared the shit out of me.

I snap out of my thoughts as I realise that the ceremony is ending and everyone is beginning to walk out. I managed to collect myself, but not before someone noticed that my mind was in the clouds as they walked past me.

"You'll be alright," he says, and I realise that it's the Fleet Admiral, Lee Adama himself, "you're a fine warrior."

"Yes sir. Just got lost in my thoughts

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_Neil Scottson – Earth SpaceNavy Communications Officer – 2017.__

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**Authors Notes 2: **This story will be set in the first person. The first half of it will tell the story of a few characters from Earth, and in the process, you'll get to see what has happened from many viewpoints of us Earthers. The second half of the story will introduce the history of the Colonials, and will be done from numerous Colonial Character Viewpoints, ie, Lee Adama, Tyrol, etc. This story will then move onto another one which will explore what happens when the Colonials return to the Colonies after the holocaust – for the purposes exactly stated above – to scavenge what's left of the Colonial Civilization and find out what the Cylons have been up to.

This story will not be too long, compared to the lengths of the others. I was expecting this to be only 10,000 words, but after the above chapter, It might reach 25,000 words or so.

So, what do youse think? Am I any good in writing in 1st person? Good idea? Expect fairly frequent updates. Reviews much appreciated!

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**Other: **I also plan on making some updates to _War Cries_, a BtVS story I have going. I do not plan to update Act of Vengeance, as that project has been put on hold. Why? Because I believe that this series tells the same things that I wanted to get around to in Act of Vengeance, but in a much better way. That is, the return to the Colonies, and/or the "Third Cylon War – Colonials find the Cylons and attack them enmasse, almost reversing the events which occurred in the BSG TNS miniseries. (planned third story in this series). I plan to finish the first part of this series fairly quickly (ie, this story)

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Cheers

Aussie


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes: **Here's the next chapter. Was going to be pretty short, but it turned out to be the length of the first one. Introduces another character. I'm looking at having maybe two more Earth characters introduced, which we'll follow throughout the whole saga, and then moving onto the Colonials and what happened to them since the ending of Season 2. going to be very broad and brief in that sense, but focus on how the Colonials and Earthers are different, from a Colonial Viewpoint.

I am not expecting anyone to being to 'feel' for my characters yet, (as that's what I'm trying to do), because they haven't been in any social situations which you, the readers, have seen. That's going to happen either next chapter or next story, don't know yet.

Enjoy and leave plenty of reviews! Aussie

**Next chapter should be up in a couple of days... sorry for the delay, wouldn't let me upload a chapter for about 4-5 days.**

From the Stars

Salvation

Chapter 2

_Dr. Anne Peterson – Environmental Officer and Lead Sensors Officer_

I was looking at the aerial photographs of Caprica which the Colonials had brought with them. It was obvious that they would have changed in the time since they were taken, especially since the entire planet was nuked, but we were getting a feel for the lay of the land, and where everything that was remaining should be. We had a digital representation of an aerial photograph of Delphi and the surrounding area shown on the centre console in front of us. Instead of laying out huge pieces of paper with the images printed on them, we had redesigned this piece of equipment to be a large flat digital viewing console which could be used for almost anything. Of course, we still had the ability to print the images, just in case of a malfunction or the like, however now days, we were doing it digitally.

Delphi and the surrounding area was currently being displayed, and I was driving the program from my workstation to the back of the control centre of the _Astral Dawn_. Being the chief Remote Sensing, Geographical Information System Officer, and Environmental Officer in the fleet, I was required at most of these meetings where possible situations and locations were considered for action once we arrived at the Colonies. I was mostly responsible for identifying features on aerial photographs, such as these, which would not normally be identifiable, and this was a complicated process. Currently, we were searching for installations which were likely to still be intact with one of the original Colonial Officers from the Battlestar _Galactica_. We were bringing this task to a close because it was almost impossible to tell what was surviving or not, even though Colonel Agathon said that he had seen the space-port fully operational in his time he spent on Caprica after the attacks. We couldn't take that factor as a major consideration as anything could have happened since then, although I did agree with a number of the crew – it was best to assume that it was still intact.

The meeting was over, and I checked my schedule, an hour until the next one. After the formalities post-meeting were over, I got up and headed to my rack. I needed a bit to think. I naturally liked the outdoors and open spaces and after spending so long cramped up on this little ship, I had started to feel claustrophobic and cramped. I had to serve in the military on Earth for a period of two years before I was accepted into SpaceNav as an Officer, and I had worked in cramped spaces there. Here it was different, for a number of reasons. The first was that the people acted differently up here. Down in the military on Earth, there was a slight discrimination between male and female personnel, and I, being female, felt it heavily. Up here, with the Colonials, there was no such discrimination and all unreasonable boundaries between the sexes had been dissolved. The other was that up here, there was no escape from the confined spaces. Earth-side, or Dirt-Side as everyone called it, it was fairly easy to go outside whenever you wanted to. Here, if you went outside, well, it was space, need I say more? I found that usually if I went to my rack, closed my eyes and pictured my home on Earth, I'd begin to feel better. With nothing else to do for the next hour, that's exactly what I was going to do.

I closed my eyes and thought of my home back on Earth. I lived on a five hectare block just West of Mackay, Australia. I loved it there, when I got to spend time there. I was always out on some project and barely got to go home. I lived out there alone after my partner died almost five years ago now. Everything there reminds me of him, which on some days, can be a good thing, but on others, it can be devastating. Still, today, I'd prefer to be back at home on my property rather than cooped up here in this ship.

Eventually my thoughts led to the Earth and how it had changed so much since the arrival of the Colonials. Interstellar space travel was not a thing of science-fiction any more, but a reality, I should know, after all, I was light-years from home aboard this ship travelling to a solar system which was the former home of the Colonials. I'd been through multiple FTL jumps, and that was just in my training alone. The mere thought of being able to travel light years in an instant was still overwhelming. A lot of the things that the Colonials had brought with them boggled the mind. The capabilities that we as a people now possessed were outstanding. A scientist, I believe it was Kevin Smithers of England had made the connection that for successful space travel over a long period of time, the air supply needed to be recycled, and the Colonials must have had this technology. When we questioned them, they had stated that they were capable of recycling the air supply almost 100. This ability to take in Carbon Dioxide and transform it back into oxygen was used to restore the Earth's atmosphere to pre-industrial greenhouse levels after we'd screwed it up so much. Thousands of weather balloons were launched world wide, each with CO2 scrubber attached. After that, we just had to wait about five years and measure the drop. Then, the weather balloons were used as target practice for the training viper pilots.

I followed this discovery closely, as well as many others which had been produced since the Colonial's arrival as best as I could, but I missed out on most of them as they happened and I had to wait until I got back into town to catch up on them. I had spent most of my life working a the leader of an Environmental Management team in Australia, and over that time I had also learned how to use Remote Sensing and GIS applications as well. People constantly told me that I had an uncanny knack for it, and I had a reputation for coming up with unusual solutions to problems using these applications. I'm guessing that's what got SpaceNav interested in me as a Sensors Officer and an Environmental Officer. I was confused when they first approached me, why the Space-Navy of Earth would need any Environmental Officers, but after signing a couple of non-disclosure agreements and accepting to the terms anyway, I found out. Because I had a fairly good reputation as an Environmental Officer, as well as a Sensor Officer, I was going to head up a team of Environmental Officers and Environmental Engineers delegated with the task of exploring routes we could take to clean up each of the Colonies and restore them back to habitable condition.

At first, I thought that it was a completely ridiculous idea. There was no way that we'd be able to restore an entire planet back to habitable condition, but then I realised that SpaceNav wasn't talking about in our lifetime. They were just talking about starting the process, and maybe in the future, our descendants may be able to return to the planets hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier. Also, after consulting with one of the lead Engineers which had been contracted for this task, I had my hopes up. He had a good theory on how to build a device to filter out radioactive material from water, and that was a damn good start as any for rebuilding the ecosystem of a planet.

I was also acting as the lead Sensors Officer for the fleet. The _Astral Dawn_ had been converted into the best sensor platform that the Earth had ever seen. If there was information out there, we'd be able to find it, and seeing as I was one of the experts in a wide range of sensor applications (Remote Sensing (Aerial Photographs and the entire discipline that goes with that) and GIS (Geographic or Spatial Databases)), SpaceNav had decided that if I excelled in my Officer training with the dirt-side military, then I'd be put in a fairly high position. It wasn't too much of a fancy position, basically I overlooked everyone's work in my field, and if any of the commanders of any of the ships needed a rundown, I'd be the one to give it to them. Also, if there were any hard knuckle-biting tasks that needed to be accomplished, I'd usually be on the team.

I thought back to the previous task, trying to identify landmarks on each of the Colonies which might still be standing. That task was hard enough in itself, let alone trying to determine which of those would still likely hold information which could be useful to us. It was made even harder when the only data that we had was from a year prior to the holocaust. Who knows what would have been destroyed, or what the Cylons may have put there in the time that they occupied the Colonies, if they'd even left. For all we know, we could jump into the Colonial system and find ourselves in the middle of a nuclear minefield.

Still, the senior officers in the fleet looked to know what they were doing. Coupled with that, plus the monumentous experience of the Colonial Officers remaining in the fleet, I thought we'd come out alright. The Colonials were both older and more experienced, seeing as they had a longer lifespan. That was one of the other facts that shocked me, aside from the arrival of the Colonials at Earth, was the fact that their average lifespan was about one hundred and twenty years (Earth Years), as a result from their higher standard of living, better medicines and whatnot. I'm guessing that's one of the reasons why the higher-ups had decided on this scavenger hunt back to the Colonies, so that we may obtain that life-span as well. After all, I'd like to live to one hundred and thirty or so, and I'm betting the world's leaders wouldn't mind it either. It was good however, as most of the Colonial personnel from both the first and second fleets which arrived at earth, which agreed, were on this voyage. I know that I personally feel safer with them around rather that more of us Earthers. Unlike us, they've actually seen the enemy, they've actually seen space combat, they've actually seen and lived on the Colonies, and they've actually spent an extended period of time in space.

I was startled awake as I realised that the alarm I had set went off; it was time for my next meeting. I was actually looking forward to this one. I was meeting with the head Environmental Engineer and a few others, and we'd be discussing techniques on how to start to filter radioactive material out of the Oceans of each of the Colonies. It was the best way to start, because if we could filter out the radioactive material, we'd be able to introduce huge quantities of algae, which would then start to produce fresh oxygen to start to restore the planets' atmospheres. There were, of course, many obstacles to overcome to achieve this, and that's what this meeting was about; tackling some of those obstacles.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes: **Second last chapter from the Viewpoint of Earth's people. If you haven't noticed, each chapter has introduced a new person. I was originally going to do this story in 1st person, and the other two in 3rd person like my other stories, but I don't think I'll do that now. I'm thinking that I should follow these people I've introduced throughout the whole journey (all three stories) from their point of view, and the Colonials from their point of view. Not doing it like this of course, with an entire chapter from the one viewpoint, about the one thing, but yeah, that looks like the course I'm gonna take with it.

The next chapter will be from an Earther's viewpoint (as I've said before), and then after that, I'll probably do four chapters from the Colonial's viewpoints from different characters, which will probably be, Lee Adama, Starbuck, Tyrol or Helo, and someone else yet who I haven't decided on, probably a female. Why do these chapters you ask? Well, to show how different viewpoints can influence the perception of things, and also to convey how the Colonials found Earth and what happened after New Caprica, in a broad sense.

After those 4 chapters, there might be one more as a 'conclusion', and then that's it for this story. You'll notice that not much happens in each chapter, it's more of a reflection. That'll change as soon as the next story starts. I'm thinking that the opening chapter of the next story will be the landing on New Caprica from a couple of the characters' viewpoints.

This is a bit of a 'deep' chapter – the thoughts of the character are rather deep.

Very long author's note. I'll conclude nice and simply: Enjoy and Review Please! Cheers – Aussie.

From the Stars:

Salvation

Chapter 3

Lieutenant Gary Myers – Pilot of the _Huntress_

Moments after I regain my senses, I feel the bile begin to rise in my throat and I make a concentrated effort to keep it down. As we emerged from the FTL jump, I remarked that I still wasn't used to the sensation. The ship shook violently and I actually look out the cockpit for the first time, only to see that we've emerged within what looks like an asteroid field, and the bad news was that we were screaming towards an asteroid about ten times the size of our ship.

"What the hell's going on up there?" I hear Lucy Thanos, the Navigation and ECO officer of the _Huntress_ said through the wireless.

"You landed us in a damn asteroid field," I replied to her. Looking out the front viewport, I could tell that we were going to have a close call with the asteroid. I pulled back on one of the controls, pulling the nose of the ship up. I also fired the ventral thrusters as well as putting the main thrusters to maximum.

"Nick, take out any rocks inbound," I ordered the Weapons officer.

"I'm plotting a jump out of here," Lieutenant Thanos says over the wireless. "Done," I heard a few moments later.

"Jump!" I said, knowing that we wouldn't avoid the larger asteroid.

Moments later, I was feeling the same sensations as I had when we emerged from our previous FTL jump, and again, I was fighting to hold down the bile.

"Maybe you should have skipped on dinner before we left," Wynne Baudrice, the _Huntress'_ Communications officer said, sitting beside me.

"Maybe," I replied.

"Lucy, where the hell are we?" Lieutenant Baudrice asked into the wireless to Lieutenant Thanos.

"Twenty million kilometres from the star of the same system," Lieutenant Thanos replied.

"We're going to start preparing the _Hunter_ for jump prep," I heard Nick Raines say over the wireless. I noted the fact and turned the engines off so that we were coasting through space. I noted that the light indicating the _Hunter's _airtight seal to the _Huntress_ had turned from red to green, indicating that Ensign Raines and Lieutenant Thanos were preparing for jump.

The _Huntress_ was one part of a two part ship which could disconnect and act as two different ships, the_ Hunter_ counterpart. They got their names because of the respective male and female reference to each of the names. The _Huntress_ contained the female joint for the two ships, the joint which would take in the male joint of the _Hunter_. The ships were perfectly capable joined as one ship, or as two independent ships. I remember my flight instructor from SpaceNav saying that the ship had been purposefully designed for the return to the Colonies. Our primary role was to jump ahead of the fleet and scout the systems for any possibility of Cylons, or unforseen obstacles as the asteroid field we had just jumped into. Once we arrived, the _Huntress_ and the _Hunter_ would separate, and one, usually the _Hunter_ would jump back to the fleet to give the okay to proceed. Each ship was elongated and about four times the size of a raptor. Each ship had the sensor capabilities of a raptor, but was more heavily armed. The _Huntress_ possessed a heavy turrent on the top of the ship, and the _Hunter_ possessed the same turrent on the bottom of the ship. Two smaller turrents were located on the sides of each ship and were akin do turrented viper cannons. The ship also had a fairly large food store for extended voyages. Most importantly, the ship's hull was armed which meant that we could take a degree of small weapons fire from a fighter, which could be very useful.

The fleet had three of these ships, and we were usually the one on the ahead scouting missions. Another of the ships scouted behind the fleet, to make sure that we hadn't missed any contacts hiding in system which would reveal themselves after the fleet left. The other was an all-purpose ship, being used as the commanders of the fleet saw fit.

My head was ringing something chronic from the recent FTL jumps. I don't know what it was about them that affected me so much, mostly everyone got used to it after a while. I, obviously, didn't. I think that I was making myself sick about the jumps, it was just something about ripping through space itself that I didn't feel comfortable with. I would put up with it in order to get to come on this mission, or have anything to do with SpaceNav though. It was absolutely amazing, here I was, light-years from home, on the way to visit thirteen other worlds, twelve of which were in the same solar system. If someone made you that offer, you couldn't pass it up for anything.

I looked at the dashboard in front of me and could see that the Lieutenant Thanos and Ensign Raines were almost through their pre-flight checks aboard the _Hunter_. Although they functioned as the Weapons, ECO and Navigational officers for the _Huntress/Hunter_ when they were combined, each person aboard the ships was capable of performing the other's tasks once the ships separated, although not to the same degree. This made it possible for better all-round training of pilots and officers as well, creating experience in multiple fields instead of one. SpaceNav as well as the Colonial Fleet Headquarters believed that this was a good way of training enlisted personnel into officers.

"Lieutenant Myers, the _Hunter_ is clear for separation," I heard Ensign Raines say through the wireless.

"Lieutenant Thanos, Ensign Raines, you are clear to disengage from the _Huntress_," Lieutenant Baudrice replied to them. I heard a series of clanks, and then waited five seconds, and I knew that the _Hunter_ had separated from the _Huntress_.

"_Huntress_, the _Hunter_ is away. Plotting a jump back to the fleet and updating old jump coordinates to this location," Lieutenant Thanos said through the wireless.

"We got you _Hunter._ See you soon._ Huntress _out," I said to them in the wireless. I looked down at the DRADIS console to see the icon of the _Hunter_ disappear, leaving us alone.

I thought that it was completely fascinating being out here, alone, with just the co-pilot of the _Huntress_. When you put it in perspective, the thought of it was awe-inspiring. No one else had been here before: Correct that, no one else from my planet had been here before. The Colonials had, as they had it marked on their navigational records as one of the systems they'd visited on their way to Earth. I couldn't help but to be more excited as the days went on too, we were getting closer to New Caprica. Considering the distance from New Caprica to Earth, we were nearly at its doorstep. Maybe a week and a half worth of Jumps and we'd be there. No one knew what we'd find there. Whether we'd find Cylons, the humans which were left behind, both, or none. It was a scary thought that there was a damn good chance that the Cylons may actually be waiting for us, but that's one of the reasons we came on this mission, to seek them out. We needed intelligence as to their whereabouts and intentions towards us, as Earth needed all the information we could get. Sure, we were years ahead of ourselves technologically now that the Colonials had rocked up, but according to all the Colonial's I'd ever heard talking, the Cylons had the ability to nuke our planet so that it would be inhospitable for thousands of years if they wanted, after all, they did it to the Colonies.

"DRADIS shows a stray asteroid passing by us by lateral 270 degrees, 12 degrees inclination, heading 40 degrees, negative 80 declination," Lieutenant Baudrice said to me. I looked out the front viewport and could see the asteroid she was referring to, it was rather large, but it was far enough away so that it wouldn't pose a threat to the ship. I looked at the DRADIS screen and saw that there was a moon orbiting a small Mars like planet nearby and decided to go and take a look.

"Lets go have a look at that moon," I said to Lieutenant Baudrice as I throttled up the engines and adjusted our course. With a quick burst from the engines, I throttled them down to idle again, as drifting, according to the DRADIS display, would get us there in half an hour.

Twenty minutes into the journey to the moon and I found myself wondering whether there would be more intelligent life out there somewhere. We'd successfully found intelligent life from another world, or rather, they found us, but the chances of two different species evolving to be exactly the same were far to phenomenal. We had to have a common root in history somewhere; somehow we'd moved to the planets we now, or once, occupied. Or, someone moved us. There was absolutely no possible way that human beings could have evolved on two separate occasions. That led to the story of these 'Lords of Kobol' referred to in the Colonial's religion.

At first when the Colonials came to Earth, many on Earth believed that the Colonial's religion was very, very, very, false. No one knew how such an advanced race could believe the things which were told throughout their religion, some of which sounded like it was out of a TV show. What added more controversy to the mix was when the Colonials found out about the major religions on Earth, and how similar they were to the Cylon's religious beliefs. To say that the Colonial civilians and military panicked was an understatement for sure. Eventually, our leaders came to the table to discuss it and try to put it aside. I mean, after all, when there is a technologically superior race trying to destroy every last one of us, religious beliefs didn't matter much, it was about survival. Survival, however, is best done when one knows where one came from, and that was a very controversial issue indeed. We on Earth had a fossil record of humans evolving on Earth, while the Colonial Religion described humans evolving, or being made, on Kobol. The leaders of Earth tried to dismiss it as a religious misinterpretation, but the Colonials showed how many times their religion had got it right, recently too. The prophecy of the dying leader taking the remaining Colonials to Earth was one, stating that any return to Kobol would lead in bloodshed was another, and in all instances, the Colonial predictions about the future had been correct.

That led to the question 'where do we come from', seeing as we had evidence for the creation of man, and so did the Colonials. The answer, well, no one knew the answer to that question; yet. But the fact that the Colonial religious telling talked about the Lords of Kobol, that was interesting. Out here in the middle of space, all alone apart from your co-pilot, I tended to get thinking about these things. Could there be another race out there, these Lords of Kobol, which was vastly different than us. So different that we, at our current level of development would interpret them as Gods? After all, the history that the Colonials had brought with them showed that the Colonial people were about as developed as America in the 1940's when the Twelve Colonies were settled. Or were they really Gods, not extra-terrestrial beings influencing human-kind. Or were they human in themselves, just a vastly more advanced version of us? I didn't know, and no one else on Earth or this fleet did either, and probably never would in our lifetimes.

It was too hard to believe that we were the only intelligent life out there in the universe, apart from the Cylons. Just looking out the front viewport I could see the amount of stars, and it was unbelievable. And those were only the ones I could see. Out there, somewhere, there had to be another form of intelligent life. Earth couldn't be the only place where it remained, if it would remain for long. We didn't realise how valuable we were in the universe, whether we were alone in it or not, and I believe that this would be a lesson to be learned by future generations. Even though I knew of this lesson, I really didn't know it, and neither did the population of Earth. How could we, we'd just started taking our first small steps out into the universe just now. I think that if we, as a species, is to survive, this is a lesson we must learn, and learn fast. We already have the means necessary to wipe ourselves from the universe, and history, both of the Colonials and us Earthers, has demonstrated that we may come to that at some point in our future.

I think that we may have began to take some of the smaller steps to doing that. Already, a number of nations had dissolved their borders, but most of that was for economic reasons. The largest example, was of course, the United States of America. Once the Colonials came to Earth and cooperation was set up, the USA had decided to place all of its effort towards the space military machine. Almost all of it's industries were converted so that they would serve SpaceNav, at the time, the newly set up international Earth Space Navy. In doing so, the President of the time had put the USA in a huge financial deficit. Unbeknownst to him though, or maybe he did know, countries in Africa and Latin America were reaping the rewards. All the industries that America had once possessed were shut down, and therefore the American people needed somewhere else to get these products and food from, a fact that many of these countries realised. Almost immediately, industries to serve America and other countries which had chosen the same route were set up in these poor areas, and money flooded in. Much of the poverty of the world disappeared in just a couple of years, with farmers being able to export their product for much higher benefits than ever. SpaceNav had even made it an unofficial law of importation that the poorly developed countries be put on the top of the list for supplying imported products. A number of these countries had since then, dissolved their borders to create a larger economic power. Also, the entire continent of Northern America was now one nation. Canada and Mexico had taken the same path as the poorer developed countries and supplied the USA with all their needs, and their treasuries had skyrocketed while America's plummeted. In a historic deal between the leaders of each of the nations, it was decided to create a new country out of the three: the UNC, the United Northern Continent, which still remained in the position of the USA as one of the world's superpowers. So, we were taking the first steps to realising our place in the universe, the unification of the peoples of Earth had began, but it would take a very long time, and even then, that was just the first step.

"DRADIS Contact," Lieutenant Baudrice said. "Receiving SpaceNav and Colonial Id's. It's the fleet," she announced.

"Send a reply that we're just going to check out this moon," I told her. Just then, it hit me. We were making our first steps to realising our place in the universe, but we were a far, far, far way from reaching the ultimate goal at the end of that passage. While I sat there and thought about how much 'better' the human race was becoming, I was taking part in a mission to find the likely whereabouts of another intelligent race, albeit one which wanted to destroy us, so that we may perhaps make efforts to destroy them. It was then that I knew that out there, if there was something else, they would probably have the same problems as us and that we'd each destroy ourselves before we even had the slightest chance of meeting one another. For us to survive as a species, we needed to overcome our differences with the Cylons, and perhaps try to teach them the same things that we'd realised. I knew, that on an individual level, there was hope. I could individually accomplish that goal, and so could many others. I knew though, that we, as a species were not going to stop pursuing the Cylons and building our forces until we knew that they were exterminated, and neither would the Cylons.


	4. Chapter 4

Authors Notes located at the end of the chapter

Reply to Reviews: Ivan K. Good Timing. I had just finished writing this chapter as I got your review asking for more updates. Lol.

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From the Stars

Salvation

Chapter 4

Fleet Admiral Lee 'Apollo' Adama – Command Ship _Demetrius_

I had been sitting here for at least an hour, thinking over the events which had occurred when we decided to leave New Caprica last time. It had been an extremely difficult ordeal, and once we rescued the survivors from the Cylon occupation, it didn't get any easier. We didn't manage to rescue all of the survivors, some didn't make it to the Raptors, and there were those who didn't want to leave; like Baltar. I didn't know what possessed them to stay, but some did. Starbuck had told me in the months after the rescue that some of the people on the planet had just let the Cylons rule them, they had accepted their new life and didn't want to go back to space to be pursued. Simply put, living on New Caprica with the Cylons, instead of being pursued through space, held a higher guarantee of staying alive, in their eyes anyway.

It didn't sink in that those people may actually have been right until four months after leaving New Caprica. We were constantly pursued, in force, by the Cylons after we fled. It was Tigh who came up with the strategy which probably let us lose the Cylons: We jump. For almost two months, we jumped as often as we could, sometimes dozens of times within a single day. We often made our stops in the space between systems, instead of stopping in systems themselves, drastically reducing the chances of the Cylons finding us. Somehow, they still managed to do so, pushing us even harder into deep space. A number of ships broke down, and in the early days jumping, we simply abandoned them and transferred the personnel off of the ships. It took less time, and the less time we were situated in the one location, the better off we'd be. Of course, we stripped the ships for parts and took the FTL drives with us, repairing them on the go, allowing us to have a quick fix for any further ships that broke down. This actually proved to be very beneficial for the fleet, although not everyone agreed upon that fact.

The Cylons had jumped six Basestars into one system in their pursuit of us after we fled New Caprica. It was obvious that they wanted us dead and would not let us go any further. Every time, they jumped in extremely close, and immediately launched a full spread of nukes. It was fairly evident that they did not want us to escape, and that they were pulling out all the stops to eliminate us. Those opposing the idea to dump the ships that broke down, strip them, and move on didn't understand what we did; that the Cylons were pulling out all their resources to eliminate us and that we needed to escape them once and for all. In those first few instances after New Caprica, if we had not jumped the minute that we did, the entire fleet could have been vaporised from the sheer firepower that the Cylons were sending in our direction. I'm fairly sure that the Cylons didn't expect us to jump as often as we did fleeing them, and that could have one of the factors that allowed us to evade them.

We found an answer to our problems concerning evading the Cylons in the form of a drifting Battlestar, the _Athena_. Immediately the old man had deduced that it was a trap. We'd been discussing the possibility of the Cylons using recovered Colonial craft from the Colonies against us, but thought that it would never likely happen. Still, we had to have a look. A drifting Battlestar was the find of the century and we couldn't dismiss it based on a far-fetched idea. It turned out that it wasn't as far fetched as we had thought. A number of marine strike teams entered the Battlestar only to find it completely empty of life, but littered with dead centurions all over the ship. What was more startling was what we found in the sensitive areas of the ship – part biological, part mechanical cylon components hooked into the main areas. It was the find of the century. With help from Sharon, we managed to understand how the main FTL computer and FTL drive of the hybrid Battlestar operated. The Cylons used a different concept that we hadn't even thought of for their FTL drives, and once we applied it to our systems, we were able to boost our FTL capability to match that of the Cylons. The talk among the commanding officers was that once we upgraded all of the FTL drives of the ships in the fleet, we'd be able to loose the Cylons for good. Which is exactly what we did. It wasn't easy, we needed to keep the fact that we had acquired additional FTL capabilities hidden from the civilian population, in case there were any Cylon agents still in the fleet. We realised that the _Galactica _or the _Pegasus_ usually distributed the jump coordinates to the fleet, and that many pilots no longer checked them. We decided to use this to our advantage. Chief Kalek and his crew made the rounds to all of the ships, pretending to be conducting FTL maintenance, when in fact they were upgrading the FTL drives of all ships in the fleet, it was then announced for a reason that would remain classified until later, that the fleet needed to make another series of continuous jumps. This, would, hopefully take us away from the Cylons, since we were making hundreds of jumps, but this time, covering a much larger distance with each. We destroyed the Battlestar completely before we left, not even leaving behind any wreckage, so as to not alert the Cylons that we'd been in that location. We'd guessed that the Cylons had lost track of the Battlestar, as it appeared to have been abandoned for a long period of time.

As far as I, or anyone knows, we were successful in losing the Cylons. We haven't heard from them or seen them ever since. We jumped continuously for a month. This time, we didn't need to leave any ships behind as we could easily replace their FTL drives on the go. A month was all that we could last, until we needed to stop for supplies. After that, we continued on at our own pace. The military eventually began to lose personnel to the fleet, seeing as there were no Cylon attacks. But, we had learned our lesson from New Caprica, we didn't let the military fall into disrepair easily, and as a result of losing personnel, we were able to begin to train some more. Eventually, enough personnel were trained that we could fully man both the _Galactica_ and the _Pegasus_ for the first time since the holocaust. Of course, the ships weren't fully manned, because there was no need for them to be.

For three years, we journeyed to astral body M-8, the nebulae which we'd seen in the tomb of _Athena_, hoping that we'd find Earth. A lot had happened in those three years. Sharon Valerii was dead. She revealed to us the reasons why the Cylons wanted to reproduce with humans about two years after we'd fled New Caprica: the synthetically created cells which made up the bio-cylons died after a while – the process of regeneration of cells within the body was not sustainable. Each time that cells were recycled within her body, it was not done nearly as efficiently as it was in the human body, and after seven and a half years, the body reaches its limit and can't sustain itself any longer. They believed that if they were able to produce offspring with a human, that this imperfection could be overcome. It was the entire reason why the Cylons could download their consciousness into a new body – to be able to live past their body's expiry date. It was happening to Sharon, and there was nothing that we could do about it. We watched, as she slowly spent a month in pain, dying, with nothing that we could do about it. Some on the _Galactica_ had warmed to her, even though she was a Cylon, while others, like my father, kept a close watch on her. She had spent the entire time on _Galactica_ locked up in the brig, and never allowed to be let out, until the old man granted Helo the right to ease her suffering. All I know of the incident was that they both left in a Raptor, and only Helo returned.

In the entire time, no one had told her about Hera, the human/cylon hybrid which Roslin kept under close watch at all times. Truth be told, originally I didn't like the fact that they'd decided to keep her alive. When I'd seen how fast she learned, and how good with computers she was, it scared me half to death. But in the years until now, I had grown a great fondness for her. She was, of course now, in her twenties, and fully aware of what she was. As far as we know, she is like the light at the end of the tunnel for the Cylons, and we had to keep her safe. That was the reason why she was not on this mission, but instead on Earth. Her existence must be kept secret from the Cylons, to keep her safe. She had grown up as a human child, and was happy to live a human's life.

When we jumped into a particular system, we had found that there was a large amount of wireless interference, and thought that it was nothing, just some localised radiation which was interfering with our communications. However, when we jumped into the next system, we experienced the same phenomenon. The same with the next system, and the next, and the next. It was thanks to Colonel Gaeta that we discovered that there was a high likelihood that the interference was _artificial_ in origin. We didn't know what it was, or have the slightest clue on how to interpret it. Some in the fleet, like many members of the military, which was about half the fleet now, suspected that it was the Cylons returning. The other half, was much more optimistic. They believed that it was some form of signal from _Earth_, as we were in the vincinity of it. Roslin's cancer had relapsed since we left New Caprica, and she was literally on her deathbed. I was never one for scripture, but apparently my father was. It was Roslin's last wish that we find the origin of the interference.

We'd spent a month, tracing the interference back to an origin of three systems. Simply put, the stronger the interference was, the closer we must have been, and we used this to pinpoint these systems. Unfortunately for us, there was a large amount of radiation passing through the general area, from a supernova, and it was interfering with our jump drives. We couldn't risk to explore the systems, but a number of personnel volunteered anyway. So, with minimal possible losses, we allowed three raptor crews to jump to each of the systems and scout them. Two returned. One, with good news. They'd found a habited world, not a habitable world, but a habited world, and made a quick pass over it. From what they could gleam from their Raptor sensor suit, the development patterns and chemical residue in the atmosphere suggested human occupation, very under developed human occupation. I remember the time, it was a time for celebration throughout the fleet; we'd found Earth. There was only one problem, we couldn't get there for the foreseeable future because of the radiation which was passing through the area. If we were to attempt to jump there, we'd risk the chances of losing half the fleet. We decided to wait it out, and perhaps send voluntary raptor recon patrols, but that idea was stopped in it's tracks when the second recon patrol we sent out never returned.

Eventually, after a month, we figured out how to operate our jump drives within the radiation, and we made the jump to Earth.

It turned out that the people of Earth were very primitive. From what we could tell, from our historical records, their development was on par with Colonial history just after the Lords of Kobol had led us to the Twelve Colonies, and even then, we were more technologically advanced. It was even more of a shock when we learned that the planet was divided into hundreds of nations, some of which were at war with each other, and that the lifespan of Earth humans was roughly equivalent to half of our own. Just getting them to cooperate had proven to be hard enough. They hadn't handled the news too well that they weren't alone in the universe, let alone that there was a technologically superior race out to kill us all. They really didn't respond too well when we revealed that we'd created this race, and that they had the ability to look human and create biological systems to perform specific tasks. We had told them almost everything, and they, as a race, had acted much like humans, which was comforting. They panicked, but then eventually adapted to the new situation. We had told them everything we could, except one fact: that Hera existed. Her existence needed to be kept a secret, even from the Earthers. They didn't need to know what she was, just that her name was Hera and that she was raised as a Colonial. But we had made a large amount of progress since we first arrived at Earth. Now, the united Earth government was cooperating with us, and we'd accelerated much of their technological advancement.

I looked out the window, and could only help but think what would be at New Caprica when we got there. We were now just a few jumps away, based on our upgraded FTL technology which had been installed on every ship constructed since we had arrived at Earth. It allowed us to transform the return journey from three years, down to just a couple of months. It helped us that this fleet didn't need to stop for supplies as often as well. This time, we were not running away from our homes, we were returning to them. I knew that in the last couple of days, I had been getting anxious about the return to New Caprica, moreso now than ever. We had one day to wait until the first recon mission would leave and jump into the general area of the planet, and I didn't want to know what we'd find. I hated the fact that since the old man had passed away five years ago, I had always doubted myself. On the entire journey to Earth, when I was the commander of the beast, I had the admiral to look to for advice, to call me up on my mistakes. Now, I didn't have that, and I don't think I ever would, not in the same capacity. He had been my superior officer as well, but now, the only superior officer I had as the Colonial Fleet Admiral was the Colonial President, Anders, and Director Tyrol, the head of SpaceNav on Earth. After all, I was the highest ranked surviving military officer out of everyone on Earth, and the Colonials, who had a large amount of combat experience in space. Sure, there were people qualified for my job from Earth, but none of them had actually seen space combat before, only simulations. So, therefore, I was best suited to the job, and we'd all agreed, I was best suited to lead this fleet back to New Caprica and the Colonies.

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**Authors Notes: **

Whaddya think of that chapter? I think it was kidna ratshit. Not even in character. I had a hard time coming up with another character for the Earth side, and I had a hard time writing Apollo in this sense (explain what had happened), so I've decided that's the end of this story and the rest of the backstory will be delivered in the next story, when things actually start happening. (ie, the first chapter will be dealing with the recon of New Caprica). I believe that the chapters already in this story are enough to get the ball rolling so we can dive in, and you, the reader, can understand what's going on. I really couldn't get into this part of the story, as I believe this part of the story I'm telling has gone on long enough, and I'm eager to actually start exploring the characters and their situations, rather than just describing them.

Trust me when I say that skipping ahead to the next story like this is for the best – you'll see what I mean

Therefore, this story's ended, and the next one will be up fairly soon. Look for the Title "From the Stars: Part 2 of 3: Return to the Colonies" or something similar. Expect it no later than 12th July, 2006.

Cheers.


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